OSHKOSH - Tim Franz was putting ceramic tile down on his kitchen floor when he got the call. He was six months into his job as Oshkosh fire chief, and a boxcar loaded with over 140,000 pounds of sodium hydrosulfite had caught fire.

Soon he was helping to facilitate the evacuation of a large swatch of Oshkosh south of 20th Avenue,an area which included his own home. It was the middle of December, and the department was working to get families back into their homes, a process that took around five days.

“(My tile project) ended up getting ruined because it just sat. I was in the middle of it and the mortar and everything else was all set up by the time I got home,” he said.

Franz, whose father served as a fire chief in Hilbert, is retiring from the department one day shy of 33 years of service and a little over a week shy of 18 years as fire chief. He’s served as a firefighter paramedic, equipment operator and lieutenant and later battalion chief in the training division, and guided the department as chief through expansions, wind storms, flooding and its 150th anniversary.

“I can tell. People say you just know when it’s time. I remember when Brett Favre said he was going to retire, he said ‘I’m tired,” Franz said. “That’s kind of how I am a little bit.”

Franz came in with a desire to expand training programs for the department, and he succeeded. Firefighters in Oshkosh now go through an eight-week recruit training program and a year-long probationary period that includes further training.

He’s ready to spend time with his family. As chief, he said, he was never really off the proverbial clock, and he’s looking forward to not having to worry about the phone ringing and bringing him back to work.

“My family put up with a lot. There were a lot of times they were expecting me to come home and I’d have to give them a call and say, ‘Well, I’m not going to be coming home tonight’ or ‘I don’t know when I’m going to get home.’”

Sitting in his office, flanked by a painting of firemen fighting a blaze around a century ago and his rescue Dalmatian, Quinn, Franz choked up when thinking about the camaraderie shared by the members of the department.

“We have a saying that ‘everyone goes home when we go to a fire.’ Now I’m going to get a little emotional about that. That’s the most important thing — that these guys become like your family here,” he said. “I’ll miss the people, and I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to stop worrying about them.”

Firefighting is a tough job, but Franz said there were many moments that made the job worth it.

Tim Franz(Photo: Courtesy Oshkosh Fire Department)

“You see a lot of bad things happen. You see people die. That’s not a good thing at all, and that wears on you over time,” he said. “But you see more positive than negative. The good part of it is when you see somebody and you get there and they’re in cardiac arrest — It’s a great feeling when you see that person open their eyes, when you’re a part of keeping them alive.

Though Franz said he will miss the camaraderie was surrounded by at the department, he’s found a similar environment — racing legends cars, ⅝-scale replicas of older American cars.

“That’s a good group of guys, too. We travel around together throughout the Midwest. If anybody has a wreck, everybody’s there to work on their car and get it back together,” he said. “I guess that’s probably why I like it — the camaraderie. I’m going to miss this but I’ve got those people.”

Franz has raced legends cars for five years. He spots his nephew, working in his pit crew when he races on asphalt. Franz prefers dirt tracks.

Franz will have more time for racing after his retirement Friday. He’s stepping away from a department full of men he brags about — how they pick on each other at mealtime, how they interact with Oshkosh citizens, how they’ve made themselves family.

“I really appreciate the job that I’ve had. I’ve lived my dream. Not many people get to do that, I’m very fortunate,” he said. “It never seemed like a job to me.”

On Saturday, his first day of retirement, he’s going to prep his car for a race that night in Beaver Dam. He might, he said, even go to another on Sunday.